


Birth Day

by DarlaBlack



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Birth, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 14:17:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15932168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarlaBlack/pseuds/DarlaBlack
Summary: Melissa and Mulder deliver Scully's baby. Written for the Nursery Files Labor Day fic challenge (someone gives birth on Labor Day, delivered by a canon character, NOT at the hospital).





	Birth Day

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [AU: Melissa Didn't Die](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15421089) by [DarlaBlack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarlaBlack/pseuds/DarlaBlack). 



> This is set in the same universe as an AU I wrote, "Melissa Didn't Die." You don't need to read that one, but know that Mulder and Scully got together in season three—hence the slightly accelerated timeline for baby-making. Contains descriptions of birth (obvs.).

**-1-**

September 4, 2000  
Farrs Corner, VA

The baking heat of August has given way, so that the morning air blows almost cool beneath the leaf-shadow. He holds her hand in his, brushes his thumb across her knuckles. They walk under the trees, in the woods behind their house, alone together for now. She leans into his hand, leans against his bicep, because her gait is not quite steady, now, and every few minutes she squeezes his fingers, breathes heavier. He pauses to look at her, at the flush that has crept onto her face.

“Scully,” he says. “Dana.”

She looks at him and her smile is just this side of forced. “Yeah?”

Hand on her swollen belly: “You okay?”

She tilts her face into the breeze, where a few strands of hair blow across it, escapees from her hasty ponytail. She lets it calm her, the coolish air, then nods and tugs his hand to keep walking. “Mm hmm. Let’s walk.” But as she takes a step, he feels the muscles under his hand go hard, her whole abdomen rigid. She stops.

“Hey,” his face slack in panic, both hands now hold her belly. “Honey, these are contractions.”

She lets out a small grunt. “N-No,” she says. “It’s okay. I’m fine.”

Mulder looks at his watch when the contraction lets up, eyes the sweat-sheen on her forehead. “We are going back,” he says. “Right now.” He is already pulling out his phone, his other arm around her waist to hold her steady as they walk.

“Melissa,” he says when the woman answers. “Yeah… yeah, I think it’s time. Can you come?”

“Melissa, I’m fine!” Scully calls toward the phone at his ear. “It’s not time!”

“Is that Dana?” she hears, tinny and quiet against Mulder’s ear.

“Yeah,” he says. “She says she’s fine, but—” Scully slows again and he looks down to see her breathe heavily into another contraction. He checks his watch. “The last set of contractions was only four minutes apart.”

“I’m on my way,” Melissa says.

 

**-2-**

It takes her an hour, but Melissa’s jeep finally rumbles up the drive, too fast, like she owns the place. The older sister emerges, swinging out her door almost before the jeep has stopped. “Somebody having a baby over here?” she calls to them. She drags out an enormous purse, a kind of floppy tote in purple tie-dye.

Scully is bent over the porch rail, weight on her forearms, Mulder’s hands at her back. “Are you here to help me or to paint the garage?” she asks, tilting her chin at Melissa’s outfit: baggy, paint-stained overalls and a bandana.

“Caught me at a bad time,” Melissa says, grinning as she climbs the stairs to her sister. “Lemme see you.” She holds out her arms, an invitation, and Dana turns to her, barefoot, tank already a bit sweaty, loose skirt to her knees. “You look like you’re about to drop that kid right here,” she laughs, knuckles coming to swipe against her sister’s protruding belly. Her arms move around the shorter woman, and they embrace, but before Melissa can let go, Dana is gripping her shoulders tight as the wave of another contraction grabs her.

“Oh,” Melissa says, bringing up a hand to rub Dana’s back. She looks to Mulder and smiles. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he says, smiling back. “This one makes…” a glance at his watch— “three minutes.” His expression is excitement brushed with mild panic: a frazzled brew of trepidation and glee. “We should go to the hospital, right?”

Melissa nods. “Yeah. Traffic is getting bad.”

 

**-3-**

They don’t make it to the hospital. They cross roughly two miles of sluggish Virginia traffic—toward the city, on a patriotic holiday—and it takes them fifteen minutes before the car is stopped completely. Scully is groaning, on all fours on the back seat.

“Mulder, take me home,” she says. “Not—not in the car. I don’t want to have a baby in the car.”

So he turns around.

On their way back up the driveway, bouncing over rocks and mud-ruts, Scully’s water breaks with a soft  _pop!_  down inside her, and she says “Oh!”

“Dana?” Melissa has unbuckled, is turned around in her seat. Dana moans again, a low, guttural, primal thing birthing from her throat. They reach the house, and Mulder throws the car in park, hurls opens the door.

He’s by her side in an instant, cradling her face, touching her back. “Scully, talk to me.”

“Oh, Mulder,” she says. “I’m sorry. The car—it’s all wet.”

He looks and sees the wet leather, dripping, tinged just slightly with blood. His heart breaks, but he smiles and kisses her mouth, holds her head against his chest, “Oh, honey, it’s okay. It’s okay, come inside.” And they leave the car to think about later.

 

**-4-**

Melissa has brought her bag of tricks, but they are not everything. “I’m a doula, Fox, not a midwife. I don’t have that kind of training.”

“But you’ve seen lots of births. You know how this goes.”

“I brought massage oil and easy listening CDs, not oxygen and a fetal heart monitor.”

Dana is draped over the back of the sofa, knees on the cushions, swaying her hips and groaning, naked but for her tank-top. Mulder stands behind her, pressing on her back, murmuring into her ear, “You can do this. You are so strong,” while Melissa holds cold water with a straw to for her to drink. They have called the ambulance, but the holiday—which has brought several accidents—means it is coming slow.

In the midst of a side-to-side rock, Scully stiffens. “Oh, oh, I need to push, oh,” and she grips the couch back so hard. She bites into the cushion under her face and groans, while Melissa rushes to get some towels. She lays them over the seat, tucks them around Dana’s knees.

“Fox, will you check her? What can you see?”

He presses a kiss to Scully’s temple and moves to her hips. He is sitting on the coffee table, holding her thighs between his hands and he almost gasps at the image before him: another wave of joy and nervous anticipation wash over him. “It’s a head, I think! It’s in there!” And he wants to cry because it’s his baby, right there, right here, his own kid, pressing itself out into the world.

“Okay, good,” Melissa says. “Dana, this is the hard part, but you can do it. Don’t force it. Just let your body do the pushing.”

Calm settles in their modest living room, then: it falls to quiet but for low moans, small gasps, gentle encouragement and words of love. The shades are drawn against the afternoon sun so the air is dim and cool. Melissa has lit a few candles. She pets Dana’s head and says “so good” with each push.

“You’re so close,” Mulder whispers. “Reach down and feel.”

And she does, and there’s something wet and fuzzy under her fingertips. “Oh God,” she says, “It’s right there, Mulder. The baby’s right there,” and in two more pushes, there is a new person in the world, first in Mulder’s hands, and then in hers. “Oh my God,” she says again, ecstatic now, holding the slippery gray thing to her chest, its umbilical cord still tying them together. It pinks and wails, screaming fury at this new light, at air in its lungs, at the world of touch and sound. Then Melissa is wrapping the blood-smeared infant in a small blanket and Mulder is helping her turn to sit on the towels.

“Oh, Dana,” Melissa says, handing the child back, and now all four of them are crying.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” Dana asks.

“I didn’t check—look and see.”

So she pulls back the blanket and laughs, “It’s a girl!” And they all wonder at this thing that has happened, at this day that started out just a September morning.

 

**-5-**

The ambulance comes, but it has missed all the action. Still. Its medics check vitals and pat Mulder on the back. It hauls them all to the hospital.

Maggie arrives to kiss all of her girls, to kiss Mulder, too, and to coo and cry over this new grandchild. (“Oh, Fox, you must be so proud.” And he is. God, he’s never been prouder. His heart is like a balloon.)

“Dana, how on earth did this happen? On the  _couch_?” but she is laughing because they are all safe and this will make such a good story. Dana holds the swaddled infant to her chest: the baby is wiped-clean and sleeping, a seven-pound marvel.

“Just look at her!” Mulder says. “Look at them both.” He’s shaking his head like it is a dream that might end. Scully smiles at him, pulls him down onto the bed where he can kiss her mouth and her sweaty hair and her ear where he whispers, “Look what we made.”

They call her Aletha, for the goddess of truth.

**-end-**

 

(p.s. This is my feminist utopia AU and their first kid is a girl if I say it is.)

 


End file.
